A difficult nebula!

This was one of my favorite objectives and finally I got it! 

The Crab Nebula, located in the constellation of Taurus, is a supernova remnant, the result of a cataclysmic supernova explosion in the year 1054. This explosive death of a star was so bright that it could be seen in the daytime sky for 23 days, and was documented by astronomers in China.

It was not an easy night, so wet! For the first time I used a hairdryer against the dew on the corrector plate and it worked pretty well. I made two sessions of 30 1 min shots each, using the hairdryer before and in between the two sessions.

M1 - Crab Nebula

Canon EOS 1100D at the prime focus of C8 (tracking not guided)

60x60 sec frames , 20 dark , ISO 800 

stacked with DSS and elaborated with Gimp

Andromeda night

Yesterday night I wanted to obtain a long exposure of M31. The sky was quite good, clear with a decent seeing.. So I programmed the Canon for 100 shoots of 2 min each (total 3h 20 m). I went inside to play chess. After one hour I checked the sky: it was cloudy :-(
Only 25 frames were good enough to be processed and this is the result

M31 - Andromeda

Canon EOS 1100D piggybacked on a GE mount (no guide). 200mm macro lens, f/5.6, ISO 800, 25 x 120 sec RAW frames + 5 dark frames elaborated with DSS and Gimp.